Interview with Arkady Zilberman

Published: May 26, 2011, 6:12 p.m.

Arkady Zilberman is the creator of Language Bridge and a former simultaneous interpreter in Russia. He focuses on overcoming what is perhaps the greatest impediment to adult foreign language learning success: cross-translation to and from one's native language. Few learners are probably aware this subconscious process goes on at all, but Arkady's extensive experience learning languages, interpreting, and experimenting on himself and other learners have proven that it does indeed occur. As he points out in our interview, even many seemingly successful foreign language learners still translate to and from their native language, but can just do so at such a quick rate that they can't perceive the process any longer. It is no secret that the vast majority of adult foreign language learners fail to ever reach fluency in their target tongues, and there are many theories behind this abysmal success rate. In Arkady's view, there is one primary root cause: 95% of adults are "foreign language incapable"—that is, they are unable to learn foreign languages easily (if at all) through traditional or even modern methods. He believes this is because their brains have adopted logical (as opposed to visual) thinking as they matured into adults. As the name implies, Language Bridge attempts to create a "bridge" over this logical-thinking barrier, turning off sub-conscious translation to and from one's native language, while also fostering visual thinking in learners who have long since lost such an ability.


For show notes, visit LanguageMastery.com/blog/Arkady-Zilberman.



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